Prose from a Poshboy

[cambridgealex]

£100 haircut is just ridiculous by the way. I've seen your hair

Seriously, what straight guy even pays >£20 for a haircut?

[Cf]

£100 haircut is just ridiculous by the way. I've seen your hair

Seriously, what straight guy even pays >£20 for a haircut?

 

[leethefish]

Ive cut my own hair ...for like 20 years i must be a gazillionare

[pleno1]

I pai £11 and tip £14, fml.

[Chili]

I loved your post Alex, well done for writing it. There are a lot of points in it I believe too. I don't see how some people are totally happy leading a robotic poker existence.
I think loads more people think like you towards the end of a winning session because it is human nature but sucumb to the £+ev mantra going on in their well trained heads. Sod that automation.

I also agree its not one long session but short ones with life in between. You are in a very fortunate position in that you are in the minority where you love your job & value having a happy life outside of your job too. So having opinions that might not sit right with the cool kids - so fkn what! You are doing everything in YOUR power to make u happy away from the table more often too. Gogogogogo.

[cambridgealex]

I loved your post Alex, well done for writing it. There are a lot of points in it I believe too. I don't see how some people are totally happy leading a robotic poker existence.
I think loads more people think like you towards the end of a winning session because it is human nature but sucumb to the £+ev mantra going on in their well trained heads. Sod that automation.

I also agree its not one long session but short ones with life in between. You are in a very fortunate position in that you are in the minority where you love your job & value having a happy life outside of your job too. So having opinions that might not sit right with the cool kids - so fkn what! You are doing everything in YOUR power to make u happy away from the table more often too. Gogogogogo.

I've also been working out a lot lately.

[Chili]

I loved your post Alex, well done for writing it. There are a lot of points in it I believe too. I don't see how some people are totally happy leading a robotic poker existence.
I think loads more people think like you towards the end of a winning session because it is human nature but sucumb to the £+ev mantra going on in their well trained heads. Sod that automation.

I also agree its not one long session but short ones with life in between. You are in a very fortunate position in that you are in the minority where you love your job & value having a happy life outside of your job too. So having opinions that might not sit right with the cool kids - so fkn what! You are doing everything in YOUR power to make u happy away from the table more often too. Gogogogogo.

I've also been working out a lot lately.

Haha glad to hear it Bruce 

[cambridgealex]

Click to see full-size image.

[cambridgealex]

sorry I couldn't resist...

[skolsuper]

Click to see full-size image.

Rofl

Have to disagree with the majority here though; yes money is less important than other stuff, but no you shouldn't cut sessions short or play sub-optimally. If your mood between sessions is really affected outside of the 15 minutes immediately afterwards, you have a problem. Lildave is flat out wrong on this and here's why: You can't fight variance, you're going to have upswings and downswings and it will be a random walk about the (hopefully upward sloping) line of your EV. By "booking a win", you are only storing up future downward variance (or 'skewing' your results). Imagine 2 breakeven players, otherwise identical, with different attitudes on this:

1 player sets his quitting time in advance and always sticks to it. He's breakeven after rake so it will be a flip whether he's up or down at that time (assuming it is long enough so that the number of hands he's played in the blinds is roughly the same as the number of hands he's played on the button cutoff etc.) 50% of his sessions are red, 50% are green, with similar magnitude.

1 player likes to book a win and often quits when he's ahead. Half his sessions he's ahead after 2 hours and leaves. Then half of the remainder he is ahead after 4 hours and leaves. Then finally in 6 hours the casino closes. Half the time he's gotten out of it by this point and half the time he's still behind. This means he's quit while ahead 50+25+12.5 = 87.5% of the time, WAL etc. However we know he's breakeven so in the long run the total losses from the 12.5% of the time he loses will equal the total wins from the times he's winning, i.e. his losses will be much less often but 8 times as big.

Is the second guy really going to lead a happier life than the 1st guy in the long run? In reality he just spends 7/8ths of his time in deluded happiness and 1/8th of the time he'll be distraught at catastrophic losses. I see this kind of player come to me for staking all of the time, I ask to see their results and they say here I'm winning at 0.5bb/100 but it would be 4bb/100 if it weren't for that session where I tilted really badly cos my car went on fire, or something like that, basically not understanding the reason for the loss and projecting some external factor that has nothing really to do with it.

On top of that, the 2nd guy will most likely play way less than than the first guy, all other things being equal, so if they were both +EV, the first guy would do better overall as well as being happier in the long run. This example only says why you shouldn't cut sessions short, but imagine another 2 players where one takes high variance lines all the time and another takes high variance lines only when behind and hopefully the same result will be obvious.

To reiterate, if a losing session affects you beyond the 15 mins immediately after it, you have a gambling problem and cannot be a professional gambler. You need to work on your mental game and fix the problem not the symptoms.

[pleno1]

very good alex, and very good keys.

[Longy]

Click to see full-size image.

Too good.

[rbc_mike]

Really interesting discussions here from alot of sickos, cheers for posting that blog Alex.

Still trying to decide whose arguments I like the most/relate to/think have the most strength.  Atm though, I just can't see how playing sub-optimally to book a win at the end of a session when you are a professional poker player is going to be good for your long term happiness.  Keys' post pretty much says it all, so won't repeat it.

Alex - it seems that you see a direct correlation between money earnt from sessions (or rather, the retention of money that may potentially not be there in the immediate moment resulting from a gto play) and happiness.  I know that for me at least, I've had winning sessions where I've felt unhappy and losing sessions where I've felt great.  Personally, happiness is a function is correct decision making - the money should follow if you play enough (ceritus paribus ofc).  Poker is a long run game (yadda yadda) but if you are deliberately making sub-optimal decisions to book wins, not only will it affect your winrate, but surely it is just encouraging an unhealthy mindset for your profession. If it gets to the point where you are actively making a non-optimal decision to book some +hEV at the expense of £ev, then you should not be at the table in the first place imo.

This whole discussion reminds me of something I heard in a podcast about trading strategies (in before financial geek): humans are scared to take risks in order to make profits, but are happy to take risks to get out of losses. Seems directly applicable here.  What are your thoughts on stop/loss limits? Seems like it may be a good thing for you (not a criticism at all), and still allows you to retain +hEV whilst still playing optimally.

Ofc there is no universal right or wrong answer - we are all wired differently, and there are a myriad of variables which may themselves be functions of randomness.  Just my two cents anyway, looking forward to hearing more views.

[SuuPRlim]

Lildave is flat out wrong on this

Good post Keys ofc everything you say is good. However I'm not wrong and here's why;

Your post is why you shouldn't cut sessions short, and you shouldn't, for all of the reasons you said, and cutting sessions short because you're winning is 100% not what I said was an advisable strategy in my post, what I said was that it's absolutely fine to sacrifice a marginally profitable spot because you've decided you are going to quit  and are in the courtesy "last orbit" or you're going through that stupid process online of "sit out at next big blind (I NEVER DO THAT BTW)" or reducing tables online to go for dinner. The spot is marginal and you don't fancy it, you pass up a small amount of potential money in return for slightly increased morale at dinner. This is totally fine imo, and in most cases optimal.

Me personally I like to pick the end of games to go completely ballistic as it's shorter handed usually and people are either stuck looking to punt to get out or locking up wins and staying for no reason, i look forward to the last 1/5 of games and am perfectly happy to dust off 8 hours profit in the last 2 hours because so many times I've made 6x the money in the last two than the first 8.

If what people are talking about is "LOCKING UP" and staying to play and nut pedal pointlessly passing up good spot after good spot just waiting till you have 66 vs AK on AT6 to get any money in is a terrible idea. IF at any point you're winning too much that its uncomfortable to sit with the money and play it properly you HAVE to leave the game and that's /discussion there (I know the social etiquette of live games and quitting but if that's the case buy in shorter or dont play imo)

Also, you can fight variance. Most of the time you shouldn't want to, but if you're in a spot where a lot more money is at risk for quite a close spot than the average amount you would gamble where you're prolly not going to see the long run of the spot for a long period if ever, then it''s often the best play to be cautious. The example of easy shove for $800 at $2/$4 compared to the exact same spot for $20k at $50/$100 lets say the EV of the play is +$2k we're not actually turning down $2,000 because the spot is reasonably unique, we're turning down the opportunity to bet $10k at 1/5 on an outcome which is actually 1/7 (or w/e it is) and there are plenty of realistic circumstances where you could (and would be advised) to turn down that gamble. Like I say, if the spot was going to be on offer 100 times a year you'd snap do it every time, if its going to be 100 times in the next 10 years then that's different.

Let's not forget though the majority of your poker play should be at stakes and in an environment you are totally comfortable with, then the above points are not applicable.

To reiterate, if a losing session affects you beyond the 15 mins immediately after it, you have a gambling problem and cannot be a professional gambler. You need to work on your mental game and fix the problem not the symptoms.

This is 100% it, I have to tell people this all the time.

[rfgqqabc]

To reiterate, if a losing session affects you beyond the 15 mins immediately after it, you have a gambling problem and cannot be a professional gambler. You need to work on your mental game and fix the problem not the symptoms.

This is 100% it, I have to tell people this all the time.

What do you mean by this? I bricked a big mtt schedule for me in a pretty brutal fashion yesterday. I was absolutely gutted, partly for people that took a piece and partly because i love the game and its sunday and i wanted to win. This stayed with me for a few hours, and I'm still a bit pissed today about it. But at the end of the day why shouldn't i let it bother me? I'm staying away from poker for the next week anyway. How does being upset at losing mean i have a gambling problem? This seems like a way OOL statement that needs clarification.